In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

So there’s this meme going around…

piny

And I’m not going to answer it, but I wanted to ask all of you:

What’s the least attractive “fantasy” component you can possibly think of? Are you profoundly lactose intolerant (or an ultra-militant vegan), so much so that the thought of licking whip cream off of anything makes you ill? Is your horrible ex a firefighter? Did you actually get caught making out with a coworker in the copy room?

Mine is probably wrestling. The last party I went to had a little wrestling area, and there was a guy there in a onesie who had so much chest hair that he seemed to also be wearing an ascot. Even apart from that, something about public homoerotic ritual involving the kind of guys who used to beat up my friends in high school…not so hot.

What turns you off?

(I realize that I could well be opening a can of worms here. For the sake of open discussion, I’m not going to pre-emptively label anything off-limits. I would appreciate it very much if you made I-statements. Shred the bodice-rippers or talk about how shemale pron just plain disgusts you, but please do remember that this is a pretty diverse group of secret perverts.)

34 thoughts on So there’s this meme going around…

  1. Hey. Militant vegans can still enjoy licking whipped cream off of someone 🙂

    Anyway. Nurses. I don’t get the nurse fetish. Well, I mean, I understand how the vunerability and physical intimacy that can come in a hospital setting could be a turn on; in other settings vunerability and physical intimacy are indeed hot. But I was a sickly child, spending more of my fair share in the hospital, and ingrained in my mind is an association between feeling horribly ill and the whole of nursedom. Chronic breathing problems and blinding headaches are not sexy to me.

  2. Honestly? Virgins. Ok, I can get a bit of responce thinking about having somebody in my life that really, really wanted me to be their first. But that’s not a virgin thing, that’s just my usual trust / acceptance / emotional connection fetish firing. Which is obviously not a big part of some people’s virgin thing, since they seem totally interested in the virginity and not at all interested in the virgin, if the distinction is clear to you, gentle reader. What’s the appeal? The awkwardness? For women, the pain and blood (ick?! much? I like blood and pain as much as the next total pervert, but the context is just no good at all). The fact that they’re probably not going to have any fun ’cause they don’t know how yet? I don’t get it.

  3. Barnes, good call on the virgin thing. In my own case I’d say awkward and uncomfortable rather than painful and bloody (I figure between the tampons and all the cycling my hymen had gone the way of the dodo bird long ago), but I know girls who had a lot worse. One friend’s fikrst attempt at losing her virginity ended with a whimper when her boyfriend lost his erection. Oddly kenough, having a partner who was going “Ow, ow, OW!” was actually a big turn-off for him. I guess for a virginity fetishist it would’ve been a dream come true.

    For me, the fantasy I don’t get is shower sex. There’s water, and slippery tile, and adding in vigorous movkement seems like asking to end up with a concussion and/or broken bones which are awkward to explain to the ER staffers.

  5. Gonna agree completely with the virgin fetish. But I really don’t get roll-play at all. Could be because I used to date a woman who would stop at the _most_ inopportune times to get redressed in (say) a “school girl” outfit…

  6. Incest fantasies really freak me the f*ck out. I mean, I understand the idea of an experienced “older” partner, but that shit just goes WAYYYY too far.

    Feeders. Furries. Sissies. Come to think of it, RP fetish in general just shrivels me up faster than a quick dip in Lake Superior.

    *Shudder* I feel soiled just thinking about it.

    Blech.

  7. Foot-fetishism — they’re feet, OK?

    The Catholic-school-uniform thing just screams “pedophilia” to me.

  8. I can’t believe no one has said rape yet. Rape tops my list of LEAST attractive fantasy components.

    I’ll second the anal and the incest though. (skeeves)

    For what its worth, my site is #1 on Google for “awkward porn.” I get folks visiting my site on the weirdest search strings. The THINGS that turn people on, I swear . . .

  10. I was going to say I’m so narrow I have trouble with just about all of them, but then piny picked one of the few fantasy elements I’m actually OK with as a squick.

    Second both the schoolgirl uniforms and the rape. Anything at all that involves a woman saying no and the man ignoring it, including those movie scenes where the guy knows better than the woman what she wants, and she stops rejecting him the moment he kisses her. And I think if anyone had wanted me in a schoolgirl uniform, I’d have promptly broken up. Those two would be my least favorite.

  11. Domination. A guy I was interested in expressed a desire to do the domination thing – tie me up, spank me, etc. All interest was lost faster than you can say “compensating for something?”

    I’d been with a narcissistic alpha male in the past who had to be the top dog in everything. He’d make up incredible stories to top everyone. He’d try and bully me when I dared to question anything he said or did. Domination to me is about someone trying to take control of me away from me. No, thanks.

  12. I second the virgin thing. My first experience was with another virgin…talk about the blind leading the blind…If you’re a virgin in love with another virgin and you want your first time to be together, well, just remember that the first time is something of a learning experience and it’ll get better. Much better;-)

    Apart from that, I’m afraid my biggest turn-off is, well, a boring personality. If I can’t talk to someone I can’t get interested in them sexually no matter how attractive they otherwise are. I’m a little embarrassed by this one, but the fact remains that anyone who wants to get anywhere with me had better be prepared to talk biology, politics, or literature first.

    Anything at all that involves a woman saying no and the man ignoring it, including those movie scenes where the guy knows better than the woman what she wants, and she stops rejecting him the moment he kisses her.

    I’m bizarrely conflicted on this one. On the one hand, a well done S/M scene can be amusing, on the other hand, ignoring a “no” outside of the context of consentual S/M with a proper safeword is a bigger turn-off that a single-digit IQ. I’ve always wanted to see a movie in which the big “man forces a kiss, causing woman to realize she wants him” scene, except that after the man kisses her she hits him over the head with the nearest heavy object, calls the police, and has him tossed in jail for sexual assault. The next scene will be his sentencing, where he doesn’t understand why he’s being sent to prison for five years for one little kiss…(Yeah, I know, that last bit would never happen in real life, but who said movies have to be realistic?)

  13. My least attractive fantasy component would be anything involving someone, um, “relieving” himself during the sexual act. Not into bodily excretions that are not saliva or semen (or sweat, I guess…who doesn’t like hot, sweaty sex?). I just don’t get it. It seems absolutely repulsive to me. Hey, whatever floats other people’s boats is fine by me, but I’d prefer not to float mine on a sea of urine.

  14. I don’t like race play. Like, one part of me would be sure they meant it. My friend says that lesbians don’t do it for him, but I can dream, being female and all.

  15. I can not abide a guy having sex with my breasts. I know they are big and I know that pushing them together provides an area of friction… still turns me off…. that and chubby chasers.

  16. I don’t get the incest thing, either. I’ve always wondered, ’cause if you spend any time looking at the sorts of sexualities that people present on the ‘net, it quickly becomes apparent that there are lots and lots of people who are really really into close relatives. And it just leaves me… indiffierent. I don’t squick, I just don’t care.

  17. Rape, obviously.

    And BDSM in which the power dynamic is a part of the relationship, with the dom deciding when something happens, any damn time; a relationship where one partner has authority to punish the other, not contingent on the second person’s agreement. Even when it is contingent on the second person’s agreement, the idea of one person making a decision, rather than an invitation, and any focus on the sub’s behavior in the rest of their life, seriously bothers me. This is sort of a feeling like Chicklet’s, but much more focused on the underlying problem (real power imbalances), because aside from that severe overextension of it, it’s a turn-on for me.

    Scenarios involving such a power-imbalance, purely as fantasy which are put away when the game is over, are fine, but anything beyond that inspires a feeling like being in the water with the crocodiles instead of on the boat watching them.

    Forceful seduction as mentioned above, where he doesn’t stop and ask, or otherwise make it so she can make a free choice where they both know she’s not just giving in to his pressuring. I kind of like “give me a chance at persuading you to change your mind” seductions, but they are very rare, and I can’t stand the “I’m going to make you change your mind” rapes (that’s really what they are) that they almost always are instead.

    Sexism, even as part of a fantasy, is an immediate turn-off—I could go for a fantasy in which there’s a society with sexist rules setting the stage, but the dominant character had better not believe the submissive one inferior in anything except status or situation. It’s useful to provide an explanation of why Character A has authority over Character B, but that’s it; Character A can enjoy having and using power, but not because he or she thinks Character B is less of a person. I’m very afraid of actual abuse, and anything too reminiscent of it is an instant and complete turnoff, so it’s a sort of safety measure, as well as fun and interesting, to build scenarios to around consensual S&M play to distance it as much as possible from what it imitates.

    Emotional distance in a lover is another thing I hate, especially coupled with the above. Inaccessability, too; I would hate a situation where we were interacting but I couldn’t talk to them if I wanted to or needed to.

    And obviously, pressure to do something I’m not comfortable with.

  19. I’m square enough that I almost don’t want to disclose.

    Ok, the usual list doesn’t turn me on. Rape, incest, pseudo child-porn, puke/scheisse/golden showers.

    Common mild-kinks that don’t do it for me: BDSM of really any stripe (even the lightest of the light), anal sex, costumes, scenarios, so on.

    Common not-even-remotely-kinky things that don’t do it for me: fake tans, over-jealous hair management, bleach-blonde hair, implants (of any kind), impractical underwear, non-face-to-face positions, dildos/vibrators, really slim girls (no judgement, just not my thing), fake nails, fake-ogasms-as-a-result-of-touching-a-penis-even-incidentally, fake orgasms generally, shirt on underwear off, women of colour presented as “exotic”, so on. I’m VERY particular.

    What I _do_ like, however: Genuine, honest sexual acts of any kind. Women of a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colours, looks, stlyes, so on, who are genuinely confortable with and happy in their bodies. A casual (or laissez-faire) approach to body-hair maintenance (including facial hair. I once dated a girl whose faint moustaches put her over the edge from cute to gorgeous. In a bisexual activist feminist kind of way. Which is hot.) Kissing like horny teenagers too afraid to go past second base. Female ejaculation. Slow and steady. Shirt/bra off, underwear on. Big hips/bums. Lounging around before, during, and after sexin’. Verbal consent. Sex in which there is no “top” or “bottom”, no one “dominant” or “submisive”.

    One of the hottest thigns of all is the recognition of the gulf between “doesn’t get me hot” and “sick and wrong”. Entire libraries of porn can be filled with that which lies in the chasm between “hot” and “gross” for me.

  21. Kyra, I’ve tried to articulate a thought three times and erased it three times, and this got me started:

    And BDSM in which the power dynamic is a part of the relationship, with the dom deciding when something happens, any damn time; a relationship where one partner has authority to punish the other, not contingent on the second person’s agreement.

    What squicks me is all a matter of context. There are lots of things that, done a certain way, I don’t like. As many folks here will recall, I’m a sadomashochist. There are a lot of people who talk about, or even try to do, 24/7 relationships. That makes me really uneasy. I simply do not believe that someone can role-play a subordinate position full-time and still maintain underneath it the core equality necessary to make consent meaningful. BDSM porn is often marketed this way, with lots of the use of the word, “slave,” and lots of “no limits” rhetoric, and I don’t like that, either. (There is nothing consensual that is also without limits. Even if I play without a safeword, it doesn’t mean I have no limits. It means that I trust my partner so much that I’m willing to hand over the power to decide where they are, which gives her the ability to push me as far as I can go, not as far as I think I can.) I’m not bothered by those dynamics when they are temporary, BTW — in fact, if the logistics work I’d like to try to stretch some of my scenes to a week or two of 24/7 D&S. But I worry that unless people come up for air and have an out-of-role self outside the confines of the scene, they lost the ability to stand on equal footing with their sex partners. I know I would.

    Some folks don’t like fetishization of body parts or physical characteristics; but then, we’ve all got body aesthetics we like. To me, the problem is when the preference is a true fetish: when someone sees a sex partner as a mere extension of the fetishized characteristic. I’m not bothered by a guy who likes feet; I am bothered by a guy who dates feet and tolerates the women attached to them.

    A lot of the “taboo” play — incest, ageplay, forced feminization, etc. — raises the “why” question for me. I guess whether it bothers me depends on how the parties are approaching it; if they have the issues out in front where they can see them, then I’m okay with it and I can even see how it allows people to work through things. Maybe it’s just my bias to overintellectualize sex, but it’s when folks are just eroticizing those dynamics wholesale and undigested that it bothers me.

  22. KG, what you wrote brings up something else: the farther one’s likes are from the patriarchally approved mainstream, the more it is likely to be called a fetish, which annoys me. You like body hair. I kinda like body hair sometimes. You like larger women. I’ve have many BBW sex partners, though more without regard to weight than because of it. Lots of folks think those interests make us fetishists. That annoys me. Attraction to ordinary human physical characteristics within the broad normal range is not fetishization. Meanwhile, lots of men seem to like huge, surgically altered breasts that I don’t like at all. Yet they never seem to call that a fetish.

  23. You, sir, are correct. The tendency to consider desires outside of the mainstream (and I realise how funny it is to claim that my desires are outside the mainstream, given how tame they are) “fetishes” is frustrating in many ways. To take your comment a step further, that I find Asian women attractive (and black women, and Latina women, and South Asian women, and Mediterannean women, and so on) has more than once been taken for “exoticization”. Fuck off. I know exactly what exoticization is, how it happens, what it does, what it means, what it consists of, and why it’s bad. Recognizing beauty in diversity (be it racial/ethnic, body type, religious, sexual, cis- or transgendered identity, political or social affiliations, complexion, hair colour, size/shape of secondary sexual characteristics, whatever) and objectifying (and exoticizing or “fethish”izing) people who possess those characteristics are two very very very very different things (with a wide range in between them).

    Of course it doesn’t help int he least that there are actual exoticizers and “fetish”izers out there making asses of themselves and ruining it for the rest of us.

    God, you wouldn’t believe the comments I got (who am I kidding? Most people on here have probably heard the exact same ones) when I filled my friends in on a situation with a girl I dated briefly last winter. When I told people that she had gotten back together with her girlfriend (who she’d broken up with about a month before we went out), I got representation of every typical comment, from scandalized to “hey, two chicks at the same time. Eh? Eh?” (Which, by the way, holds no appeal for me at all. I’m a one woman man in many many ways.) And, reassuringly, more than a few people who didn’t blink. It’s frustrating how so many people think of the Bisexual Woman as some strange mythological beast that represents the Holy Grail for men, but should be feared and mistrusted by women. But I’ve drifted way off topic.

  25. Some folks don’t like fetishization of body parts or physical characteristics; but then, we’ve all got body aesthetics we like.

    I spent all of my single and available years really skinny (and am still reasonably thin). There’s kinds of appreciation of a skinny body which feel fine, and then there’s a point where admiration for my thinness would get unsettling, and I’d wonder if this person would still fancy me if I gained enough weight to be average.

  26. I’m with KG: two women at once doesn’t do it for me. I’m self-conscious enough as it is, i don’t need another woman to add to my worries. One is plenty for me.

    One man and one woman, OTOH…that’s a different story…don’t ask why the self-consciousness doesn’t carry over, i don’t know.

  27. Lynn: Would you say that’s similar to the difference between “I love you and your big ass” and “I love your big ass”?

  28. I dated a guy who liked feet. He used to take me to the shoestore because watching me try on shoes turned him on. He bought me lots and lots of shoes.

    God, I miss that guy.

    I had another guy shave my privates, which was fine, no problem. But when he started calling me Baby Girl I squicked so bad I lost all interest in having sex with him.

  29. Hedonistic, I noticed this:

    I had another guy shave my privates, which was fine, no problem. But when he started calling me Baby Girl

    I find a lot of people make this association, but as I think you would agree, it’s not a necessary association. In fact, I tend to think of completely hairless public areas (on obviously adult bodies) as signifiers of kink, and sometimes submissiveness, rather than part of an ageplay dynamic.

  30. It’s kinda funny to read some things in that list that I’m quite fond of. *grin*

    Yep.

    I’m really surprised at what has not made the list — only one mention each for scat and bestiality, though IME those are big squick areas for lots of people, and I didn’t see any mention of watersports or rimming.

  31. Lynn: Would you say that’s similar to the difference between “I love you and your big ass” and “I love your big ass”?

    Yes, that could be a good parallel.

    I’m with KG: two women at once doesn’t do it for me. I’m self-conscious enough as it is, i don’t need another woman to add to my worries. One is plenty for me.

    Threesomes don’t squick me the way some of the things people are listing do. I mean, I totally have no desire to go there, ever, but it’s not a “just mentioning it will kill the mood” squick, the way rape fantasies and schoolgirl outfits (and scat, and, for that matter, anything with significant dominance/submission overtones, and several other things) are. Joking or talking about the threesome we’re never really going to have is OK. But they do make me uneasy in a different way: first, the way they’re supposed to be practically every man’s ultimate fantasy, and, second, the way I see men writing in to Dan Savage saying their lives won’t be complete until they have that threesome, and they’re pressing current girl friend about it, even though she’s unwilling. Ick.

  32. Thomas—

    I had trouble articulating it too. Then you mentioned

    I simply do not believe that someone can role-play a subordinate position full-time and still maintain underneath it the core equality necessary to make consent meaningful.

    and that’s exactly it. I went looking for BDSM erotica fairly often for awhile, in the absense of anything interesting in real life, and half the time it was really hot, and the other half the time I’d come away feeling absolutely sick—the difference, essentially, is meaningful consent. What bothers me is both the idea of someone overriding my lack of consent, or deciding that as the dom, they don’t need it (as if lack of consent were a punishable affront to their authority), and I’ve found people who consider that an acceptable viewpoint, which scares the hell out of me; and also the concept of “I know you want it (or will like it), and I’m going to prove it to you.” There’s all the difference in the world between “I’m “stuck” here because I want to be; this situation is wholly dependent on my wanting to be here” and “I’m stuck here and don’t want to be,” and there’s too many people who don’t give a damn about which is which as applied to what someone else is feeling.

    Thing is, the trust that you spoke of doesn’t come easily to me at all—there’s this part of my brain that’s always pointing out to me that abusers will act differently in order to gain trust, and I’m almost paranoid, sometimes, over whether that’s the case. My mind will create nightmares for me, of a trusted lover becoming something else—I’m afraid of abuse, and of caring for someone enough that it would hurt me to end the relationship because of abuse. And, perhaps naturally, abuse that comes wrapped in the cloak of BDSM is worst of all, in no small part because it threatens where I’d like to be able to let my guard down and let go.

    Being dominant is easier, although it doesn’t seem to do quite as much for me.

  33. Kyra, yes, yes and yes.

    I look for BDSM erotica too, and it’s a mixed bag. What really bothers me is that some people do BDSM in a way I can respect, but find it easier to market to misogyny (that was my only criticism of the late, great Insex).

    Our community has its share of assholes. My experience is that we’re significantly better than the general population on respect, consent and trust — but it’s a broad community, and lots of folks doing BDSM are isolated from the rest of the community, don’t get socialized into it and learn everything they know from the internet. I think there are too many people that believe the box-covers of their favorite porn and don’t appreciate the difference between pushing limits and ignoring them. Also (at the risk of raising a controversial inside-baseball issue), a scene really ought to revolve primarily around the bottom’s needs. Not that the top shouldn’t have limits and include scene elements that make it hot for hir, but I think the best way to reward the bottom’s vulnerability is to keep the focus on giving the bottom what zie is looking for.

    And some people are just abusers. My wife had not explored BDSM much before we met, and she often remarks that she was lucky to start doing so with me instead of some nut. I wish I could say that the world (or at least the broad BDSM community) contained only trustworthy people, but we’re still in a patriarchy. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

    When I was younger, I mostly topped, since I was often playing with newbies and it’s easier to teach from the top, and also because there are just more bottoms. Like you, I get more out of bottoming, especially in a long-term relationship with a great foundation of trust. Since my wife leans towards bottoming, too, I have to make sure I’m doing my fair share of topping.

  34. Threesomes don’t squick me the way some of the things people are listing do. I mean, I totally have no desire to go there, ever, but it’s not a “just mentioning it will kill the mood” squick, the way rape fantasies and schoolgirl outfits (and scat, and, for that matter, anything with significant dominance/submission overtones, and several other things) are.

    I should clarify that that’s more or less what I was getting at. There are relatively few total mood-killers, and a vast and diverse collection of things that I just don’t hold any appeal for me. And I make the choice not to engage in sexual acts that don’t hold any appeal for me. Everybody draws the line as to when they will and will not go ahead with a sexual activity (or any other for that matter) even when it doesn’t get them hot wherever they feel is best. (I realize that that sentence was unnecessarily complicated, but there you go…) I draw mine fairly tight, some people are a lot more accomodating. *shrug*

    Kyra/Thomas: Although I have no connection to BDSM and am quite happy with that, I share frustration that are more or less parallel to yours. A few pricks who share your predilection (or completely different predilections that look similar to the outside observer) can give really spoil the fun for the rest of us. I don’t have any tastes that get vilified as badly as BDSM, but I don’t think it’s too presumptuous to claim parallels…. piny wrote a related post a few months ago about a cisgendered guy who presented himself as a friend of transmen so that he may harvest a bountry of blowjobs. And that set up all kinds of trust issues that made it hard for cisgendered guys who were legitimate allies and legitimate sex/relationship partners of transmen. Care to weigh in, piny? Am I seeing a parallel where none exists?

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